Conway's Game of Life, but musical • Hacker News Board

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#11

Post by abemiller » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

musical space with 12 notes per octave may be better mapped onto a hexagon grid rather than a square one

https://www.whatistoday.net/2019/09/jammer.html

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#12

Post by gobdovan » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

Pretty cool! How do you decide what tone to play on birth/death? Is it based on the position in the grid or do you just pick from a simple scale at random?

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#13

Post by renewiltord » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

There was a cellular automata music sequencer once that I enjoyed. https://earslap.com/page/otomata.html

Needs flash or iOS. Simple mechanics but lots of fun music. Good design.

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#14

Post by ge96 » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

SanjayMehta wrote: post #4

ge96 wrote: post #2

is broken or down rather

The play buttons appear in the top right corner of each panel.

I was seeing a "Site can't be reached" message but now it's up again

Side note, it's the Black Mirror episode Thronglets

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#15

Post by WhitneyLand » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

Very cool Hudson.

“each cell birth plays a harmonic note and each death plays a complementary tone”

How are you deciding which notes to play?

Is it a function that somehow depends on generations or position?

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#16

Post by sodaplayer » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:27 PM UTC

Oh this is cool. I did something similar with a modded Launchpad by programming GOL on it and converting the positions by column and row to octave and degree and then outputting MIDI to a synth.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/os4nF1RoPJCwNiLt6

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#17

Post by casty » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:43 PM UTC

The demo sounds lovely. Thought I’d mention that for the Eurorack synthesizer format there is a 16 cell sequencer by NLC: https://www.nonlinearcircuits.com/modules/p/cellular-automat...

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#18

Post by hudsongr » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 4:55 PM UTC

WhitneyLand wrote: post #15

Very cool Hudson. “each cell birth plays a harmonic note and each death plays a complementary tone” How are you deciding which notes to play? Is it a function that somehow depends on generations or position?

Yes it's based on the position. The column determines the note and the row determines the octave.

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#19

Post by AlecSchueler » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

vunderba wrote: post #5

Nice job. I thought about building something like this many years ago, but ended up experimenting with music generated from abelian sand pile algorithms instead. I've seen a number of attempts at using genetic algorithms to recombine previous musical patterns. What's obviously missing is a "fitness function" that can approximate the equivalent of human taste, so the final evolved forms just end up being widely random…

> What's obviously missing is a "fitness function" that can approximate the equivalent of human taste, so the final evolved forms just end up being widely random in terms of quality.

Honestly for me this is a feature not a bug. If I want to hear music that matches my personal taste exactly I can just go to my instrument and play it. These tools are a way to taste more exotic forms and see if there's anything worth carrying over.

Re: Conway's Game of Life, but musical

#20

Post by jMyles » Thu, Sep 11, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

Super interesting. Is there a dedicated place where I can just play with Melody Breeder?